Kirjahaku

Higgins plans an introductory chapter that will contextualize the Synod and explain why it's special and potentially transformative. The book will also contain a day-by-day record of personalities, crises, behind-the-scenes politics, lapses, triumphs. Endorsements "Like an ecclesiastical Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Higgins searched the aulas of the Vatican and walked the cobbled streets of Rome in search of clues and sources who would piece together what was really going on behind locked doors in the Vatican. This book is a remarkable achievement in doing that, but also a wonderful record written in colorful prose of an event that to the outsider was presented by the Vatican in awkward and uninviting language, or 'ecclesiastical bafflegab' as Higgins describes it. It's 'unputdownable'" --Garry O'Sullivan, publisher and editor, The Irish Catholic and The Synodal Times, Dublin, Ireland "In this erudite yet accessible work, Dr. Higgins provides us with a most helpful prelude outlining the background to the 2021-2024 Synod of Bishops on the themes of communion, participation, and mission. His diary entries, from his vantage point as an 'external observer' to the discussions going on in the synod hall, provide helpful insights into the deeper implications of the Synod for the Catholic Church, especially moving forward from the legacy of Pope Francis into the Petrine ministry of Leo XIV. All in all, delightful and insightful in equal parts " --Raymond Lafontaine, episcopal vicar, Archdiocese of Montreal, table facilitator at the 2024 Synodal Assembly Michael W. Higgins has been an administrator and teacher at several Canadian and U.S. Catholic colleges and universities. Currently he is Basilian Distinguished Fellow of Contemporary Catholic Thought, St. Michael's College, University of Toronto, and Distinguished Professor of Catholic Thought Emeritus at Sacred Heart University, Fairfield, CT. He has authored or coauthored numerous books, including The Church Needs the Laity: The Wisdom of John Henry Newman, and, with Kevin Burns, Impressively Free: Henri Nouwen as a Model for a Reformed Priesthood and Genius Born of Anguish: The Life and Legacy of Henri Nouwen. +

People of God is a brand new series of inspiring biographies for the general reader. Each volume offers a compelling and honest narrative of the life of an important twentieth or twenty-first century Catholic. Some living and some now deceased, each of these women and men have known challenges and weaknesses familiar to most of us, but responded to them in ways that call us to our own forms of heroism. Each of them offers a credible and concrete witness of faith, hope, and love to people of our own day. Thomas Merton was the consummate post-modern holy one: flawed, anti-institutional, a voice for the voiceless. But he was also a classical traditionalist: centered, obedient, in search of stability. He was a religious thinker of remarkable insight, a social commentator of courage and conviction, and a writer of startling virtuosity. Michael W. Higgins recounts the life of this insatiable wanderer. He explores the various layers of influence and evolution in Merton’s thought and spirituality. This book tells the remarkable story of a life that remains to be understood from its beginnings and long after its premature ending.

A fresh look at a complex pope with a simple agenda: radically reforming the Catholic Church. Jorge Mario Bergoglio is the consummate disruptor, disrupting archaic modes of church governance, disrupting our collective spiritual complacency in the face of new challenges to our human flourishing while at the same time remaining deeply faithful to the organic traditions of the church. He is the leader of the Roman Catholic Church, but beyond that he is a universal leader with commanding moral presence, able to connect with laypeople and with non-Christian faiths. Pope Francis is also a credible moral voice on issues of immigration, economic inequity, the devastating consequences of political populism, and the accelerating threats to the environment, in spite of the fact that he faces deep infrastructure and governance scandals in his organization. In his determination to reform the Vatican and ensure the Catholic faith evolves in a way that is relevant to the 21st century, Francis is very much carrying on the tradition of the Jesuits, an order known for their work in education, humanitarian missions, and social justice. A deep understanding of the Jesuit order informs Michael W. Higgins’s approach in this novel reading of a papacy unlike any other.